GregWormald

I don't use Apple Music for my music () because I have heard of many issues that have destroyed home music collections. For instance—After moving my collection of 4000 albums to a new computer, some of the artwork didn't transfer. So I had Apple Music fill in the missing covers when it offered. BAD MISTAKE! Not only were many of the missing covers not recovered, but Apple replaced many other covers with the wrong artwork. Sometimes it deleted the correct covers from an artist and replaced them all with the same wrong cover. Steve Jobs was a music aficionado and during his reign music management was a priority. Since the focus on telephones, music at Apple has been deteriorating. I now audition music on the free Spotify and then download hi-res versions and store them locally. I don't stream at all.

One of the things that a friend does, and I've started copying on a minor basis, is making fictions and nonsense about me and putting that online. Does a site/product want a registration? Make up data and use that! As long as I keep a record of registrations, who's going to know that addresses, DOB, other preferences, hobbies, are fiction. My friend (on one site) has a PhD in macramé, lives in Tierra del Fuego, and is 125 years old. Running a VPN also has advantages, and many browsers now can delete tracking, etc. if those options are active. Make your data not only difficult to access but fancifully inaccurate.

Cable or hose? IMO cables need to be auditioned 'in situ'. I've bought a very highly reviewed set that after 3 weeks had turned me off music almost entirely. Ensuring that the cable was noticeable was never on my list so can't help there—I use plain black in the garden.

Good work! A friend who was a gunsmith for a local pistol club told me that 90% of the repairs he did were "clean, tighten, oil"— just a need for basic care and service.

Buy cheap grey garden hose. Thread cheap cable though hose. Connect speakers. Done.

I know that when I asked the designer of my DAC, he said just connect everything up so it works, get it working and then feel free to turn off the amps and just keep feeding a signal to the DAC for the required break-in time.

Your set-up should be fairly straight forward. Analog outputs (right and left) of the Arcam to the line in connections on the pre amp, output of the pre amp to the input of the Integra, output of the Integra to the speakers. Everything connected to the electricity. Double check all connections for complete insertion and the correct sockets. Check that all switches, buttons, etc. are switched, pressed, and not pressed so that there is a clear path from the CD player to the speakers. Volume on the Sherbourn turned down. Power up the CD player, the pre amp and the amp, in that order. Put on a CD, press play, and adjust volume. You should have music if all gear is working correctly. Good luck.

And for something completely different : https://vaf.com.au/shop/ols/products/vaf-soundwall I've heard a VAF soundwall at a hi-fi "get together" and was reasonably impressed.

I'd be really surprised if there wasn't a good selection of active speaker systems above $40K. The current retail on my SGR MT3.3 actives is $110K here in Australia. (They haven't yet made the web site which still shows the previous 3.2 model.)

The unwanted forward/back motion of the whole speaker causes more 'musical distortion' than sideways motion because forward/back motion of the drivers is what generates the desired sound. The motion of the cabinet caused by the drivers pushing the cabinet directly is proportional to the masses of the drivers vs the massiveness of the cabinet. While lighter speakers are more affected, in general the air and structural vibrations that impact on the speakers are more significant than the internally generated ones. There are a few technical papers available both at the IsoAcoustics and Townshendisolation websites that go into the whole unwanted vibration issue.

Close. While the Gaias do focus somewhat on forward-backward damping, that's because unwanted fore and aft motion of the drivers generates the most audible distortion. The major vibration source is the return vibration to the speakers from the music vibrating the room. The movement of the whole cabinet forwards and backwards as a result of the driver being driven is actually very, very, tiny.

I wouldn't send mine back when the free trial period was over. I knew they were staying within about 5 minutes or so. Mine fortunately just replaced the spikes. IsoAcoustics were most helpful when I rang about information and recommendations. They said that with my set-up the special feet for carpet were not needed and also recommended the cheaper of the two sets of feet that fit.

Sadly, I think that most 'consumers' of recorded music don't really care or know about the degradation caused by the loudness wars. Even more sadly, many don't seem to actually care about music either—or maybe they just don't care about what I call music.

If you enjoy what you have and are just wishing for a better tonal balance then may I suggest Digital Room Control before (and possibly after) you go to the trouble, risk, and spending on new equipment. There are a number of options—the only one I've tried is Dirac and I never turn it off. I've even run my analog sources through a digitiser to enable Dirac for them.

Oooohhhh! While it is clear that active speakers are powered speakers (technically all speakers are either powered or silent —but putting that aside) powered speakers are not necessarily active speakers. Active speakers run the crossover process after the pre-amp and before the power amplifiers and use separate power amplifiers for each resulting frequency band. It is usually considered that "powered speakers" run passive crossover networks after the amplifiers just as 'normal' unpowered speakers do. Active speakers can have external (outside the box) crossovers and amps. Linn used to be an example of this configuration, but I haven't kept up with their speaker products.